TW: suicidal thoughts, emotional manipulation, pregnancy/miscarriage, twisted and evil characters (i.e. Theo) 

XANDRA FELT INVINCIBLE. With time slowed around her, her friends' faces frozen in battle cries, swords and guns moving in slow motion, she felt like she could do anything. She was powerful, and she didn't have to hide it at all. 

The Damia they were battling was their final test, and everything was going smoothly. It was perfect. A little too perfect. 

They had found their Puppet completely on their own, looking out for suspicious activity. It was nearly impossible to track down Puppets, since any suspicious behaviour, was normal behaviour for teenaged children. Dark circles, skipping classes, snappish attitudes. Literally the definition of a teen. 

So, instead, Dexter had worked out a new method. It was quite genius, too. 

"Just hint at knowing what Mirage is, or wanting to kill Puppets," he explained, in a much clearer definition than Naoki's explanation of Mirage. Short, simple, understandable. Xandra vibed with that. "The Puppets will feel threatened, perform aggressive behaviour, and reveal themselves." 

"You're a genius!" Naoki exclaimed, dapping Dexter up. "God, we should've hired you sooner. Always go for the smart ones." 

Dexter grinned, side-hugging her. 

Illias grudgingly admitted it, too. "It's pretty smart. I wish I'd thought of it." 

"You wish," Theo murmured. 

"What?"

"Nothing." 

"Let's test it out, safely," Naoki instructed. "We can try on a few of our suspects from our list. If they react how Dexter says, and we follow through and find Damia at their houses, then we can assume Dex's method is foolproof." 

"And a lot of proofing against fools we'll need," Xandra grumped, but threw Dexter a little grin when everyone else looked away. 

Paris was bouncing excitedly. "When do we start? I've always wanted to be a secret agent." 

"Look, Barcelona, can you calm your motor for just one sec?" Theo said, but he looked just as excited. "You haven't even gotten your longsword handled."

"You haven't even gotten powers, period," Paris frowned. 

Theo waved him off. "S'what you think." 

Paris had raised an eyebrow. 

It worked, though. Dexter's new way of sussing out Puppets had been wildly successful, and they managed to find new ones every night. Xandra was, mentally, exhausted. She had to think twice as hard, day and night, but it was a refreshing change. It made her grateful for the normalcy of school, and she was actually going to her classes now. Her grade in band was an A. She was doing well. 

In Mirage, too, she was thriving. Everything felt right when she was moving fast, the whole world slowed down, and her sped up senses keeping perfect pace. Her ADHD had always made it hard to focus, but now, with her physical speed matching her mental speed, she felt like she could do anything. 

Like take down a massive monster. 

She still hadn't gotten used to the sight of the Damia. Some were more monstrous than others. Some were more similar to black-hued animals. The worst ones looked like twisted versions of people. They were all horrible, though. 

The kid they were saving had a particularly disgusting Damia. Their name was Hanne Long, a senior who Xandra had taken Spanish II with, and recalled that they could never remember the word for "and". It was a single letter. Dumbass. 

Regardless, their Damia was much worse than their memory. It was a hulking, bubbling mass of black tar, with bubbles popping every so often in the skin, releasing toxic wisps of smoke. Naoki told them to avoid that smoke at all costs, since one lungful could induce a Mirage-sleep. 

Mirage-sleeps were medically induced unconsciousness, whether from fainting, asphyxiation or a coma. You didn't go back to reality in a Mirage-sleep, but instead, you remained in Mirage until your body recovered or someone awoke you. Naoki said it felt like dying. 

So Xandra's job had been to keep the smoke away from the others. She could move fast enough, even in the cramped New York City apartment, to bottle the deadly yellow curls and store them for the Keeper's society later, without interfering with their attacks. Xandra marvelled that they trusted her enough to leap into battle, letting her deal with the danger. That just pushed her to do her job even more. 

She picked up the first bottle, unscrewing it, and dipping it into the smoke. Luckily, the smoke seemed more viscous than normal smoke, and the rest of it followed easily once its tail was caught inside. Xandra had a mask over her nose and lips, gloves snapped over her skin, so she wasn't worried about diving right in. 

After collecting the smoke, she recapped it, and set the bottle on the whole part of the demolished countertop in the kitchen. The fight was raging in the living room, fully visible, since most New York apartments didn't have walls between their kitchens and living rooms. So Xandra had full view of the whole disaster. 

She'd already stored several bottles when everything began to go wrong. 

PARIS NEVER FELT MORE ALIVE. He could slice through walls with a single blade, send entire buildings shuddering to the ground with a few well-placed strokes. He was thrumming with power. 

Part of him ached at the fact that, even with all this power, it would never really be enough. He could fight, yes, and protect those who needed it. He could save a life. But there would always be one life that no powers could save. And the stronger he got, the more of that he was reminded. 

His anger fuelled him, though, and soon enough the Damia before them was bleeding heavily, black ink gushing out of deep gashes in its side, staggering about and screaming with an unholy pain. 

Xandra was zipping around, collecting the smoke from its bubbling pores, and Paris quietly thanked her in his head. He'd never come out and say it, Xandra was far too much of a bully to let that one go, but he could still be grateful to her. She was saving his ass, just as he was watching out for hers. 

By some miracle, they had become something like friends. 

Yet friendship wouldn't save them from the new terror that was unfolding. 

DEXTER WORRIED HE WASN'T ENOUGH. After all, his powers only helped so much. He'd warned them of the Damia's arrival, and could occasionally pinpoint his feelings enough to tell someone to duck or roll, but other than that, everything felt like it was going to be bad. He couldn't decipher his normal anxiety from the prophetic anxiety, which was only generating more anxiety of both kinds. 

God, he wished he could get out of his head sometimes. 

Watching Paris slide on his knees, using the monster's blood as a slip-n-slide, drawing his sword up and slitting through the monster's belly. Watching Xandra run like a blur of smokey eyeliner grace. Even Theo, with the guns he'd learned to shoot, taking careful aim and blowing the flesh off the beast's shoulder. 

They all seemed so heroic. So superhero. Dexter just felt ordinary, shouting from the sidelines. The benchwarmer, the unofficial cheerleader, the audience in the stands. 

Suddenly, Dexter collapsed, grasping his stomach and crying out. Stabbing pain, like a thousand spikes were driving into the soft flesh of his stomach and twisting. He held onto a slab of destroyed refrigerator for support, knuckles white, sweat pouring down his stomach. He screamed again, tears blurring his vision. 

No anxiety attack was this. It wasn't even the result of eating way too much soft bread rolls at dinner last night. 

Something bad was coming. Dexter felt it, as sure as he felt the wrenching pain in his gut. 

THEO COULD BE MORE. He knew he could be. Firing bullets was fun and all, but this was a waste of his talent. 

As their training days had passed on, hundreds of hours of sweat and blood and tears, Theo had pushed himself harder than he ever had before. His school grades dropped, and he spent most of his days sleeping, wandering Mirage and testing out his powers. 

He had found things out, in those lung-aching moments in the dreamscape. He'd learned things he almost wished he could forget. 

But they were powerful things, and Theo was not about to be the weakest in the group. Too many people relied on their mutual power. If there was even one weak link, they could all go crashing down into the flames. Theo would not be that link. He would be strong enough to make up for all their weak links. He wouldn't let his new friends down. 

So Theo learned to reach into the minds of people. 

It was horrible business. He'd found Sleepers, and practiced on them. Illias had told him his mind control was useless, but he could still see into their feelings. Theo found the closest dreamer, and reached into their minds. 

Usually it was trivial. Fighting with parents, paying the taxes, calling my son, calling my mother. Sometimes it was twisted. I will never be enough. Nobody likes me. I'm ugly. I'm disgusting. I'm spiralling and I can't save myself and I don't want to save myself. Feelings that were all too familiar with Theo. 

First, he'd tried to make it better. He'd soothed their feelings, using that window into their minds to calm them, to tell them exactly what they needed to hear. But with every flash of coloured iris, and every entrance into the cacophony of the mind, Theo lost bits of himself. 

That was when he started to twist those nightmares into something worse. 

Jhumpa Skye, a middle aged woman with three children, suffering from postpartum after the miscarriage of her fourth. Her thoughts were louder than everyone else's, and they snapped something inside Theo. 

Failure. You couldn't even carry a child to term. You failed your one job as a mother. As a woman. You will never be enough, not for them, not for yourself, not for your husband. You are a failure. You might as well end it all and save them from becoming like you. Nobody should become you. You are everything wrong with the world. Cry, pathetic thing, for you have failed. You're just like me, but so many more people rely on you, and you let them all down. You should never have come here, looking for solace, because you will only find pain. That is all you deserve. 

Theo wasn't sure when he began feeding those thoughts into her head, but suddenly Jhumpa was screaming, curled on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably, every wail ripped from her chest like some demon was yanking it from her. 

Some demon, like Theo. 

But it had worked. And if Theo was a demon now, no other demons could hurt him. If he was the worst of them all, the monster of monsters, then all others beasts would bow to him. 

So Theo had a plan. 

He would be the monster of monsters. 

The beast of beasts. 

He would enter the mind of the Puppet, and he would destroy the Damia from within. 

So he did. 

Well. You know. In theory.

The Damia was curled around the Puppet, who sat limp in a nest of chains, screams, and black-winged butterflies. A nest of their fears. Theo recognised them from a few of his classes: Hanne Long, the leader of the King's Drama Club. They were sweet enough, but apparently terrified of butterflies. 

Paris was attacking, sword drawn, and causing maximum pain. The beast's focus was all on him. For a split second, Theo wondered if he should do this. He would be leaving Paris with the full brunt of the Damia's attention, and people could get hurt. 

But Xandra was their failsafe. She would be able to see any danger a mile away. So would Dexter. Theo trusted them to watch each other's backs while he finished the mission. 

He dove between the monster's legs, dimly registering a faint cry behind him. It sounded like Dex. He had no time to go back. 

He rolled, coming to a stop at the nest of thick chains, which he could see were made of words. Hate, literally binding Hanne down, constricting them, with pretty butterflies atop it all to make them scream. 

But Hanne wasn't there. Just a limp, defeated body. The body of a puppet. 

Theo cupped his hands around their cheeks, and entered their mind. 

But the Damia won. 

TERROR. PURE TERROR HOT LIKE FIRE DOWN MY THROAT, A LIQUID BURNING, PANIC CLAWING AT MY TONGUE IN A SCREAM OH GOD I'M GOING TO DIE I'M GOING TO DIE OH GOD FUCK NO WHAT HAVE I DONE WHAT HAVE I DONE THERE'S SCREAMING WHO'S SCREAMING IS IT DEXTER IS IT PARIS IS IT XANDRA WHAT HAVE I DONE WHY DID I DO THIS WHAT WAS I THINKING I'M AN IDIOT I'M A FAILURE I'M 

HUNGRY. 

I'M SO, SO HUNGRY. 

Theo turned from the nest, eyes weeping black, the pupils completely swallowing up the whites of his eyes. Black dripped from the corner of his lip, leaking onto his red shirt. The tips of his fingers were black, sharpened into claws. 

"Hungry," he repeated, and the monster roared with him, his voice reverberating through its lungs, and its scream echoing out of his mouth. "So hungry." 

And Not-Theo lunged for the soft, vulnerable meat that was Dexter Thorness. 

IT ALL WENT WRONG SO QUICKLY. Illias and Naoki had been watching from the entrance, as they always did, curled up on opposite sides of the hallway outside apartments and flats. This should be like no other run, just a formality before the kids got officiated as real Keepers. 

But they were wrong. 

They heard Dexter screaming, and Naoki jolted up. 

"We need to go in," she said, reaching for the handle. "There's trouble." 

"A little screaming is natural," Illias soothed, but he looked equally worried. "It's probably fine." 

"I don't care, I'm not letting them get hurt," Naoki ignored him, turning the latch. 

Illias put a hand over hers, stilling it. "Don't interfere. They'll have to wait longer to get initiated, and then the whole mission will be set back." 

"Oh, the mission," she laughed sharply. "That's all this is about, right?" 

"That's not fair," he said softly, flinching back. "You make it sound so heartless." 

"It is," she said plaintively. "You're heartless." 

"Really, Naoki, this isn't the time! This always happens! I want to talk to you about this, I really do, but you make it so hard, and at the worst moments," Illias burst out, raking his hands through his hair. "I miss you! So fucking much, I miss every part of you. I hate fighting. Please, please, I don't want to fight with you any more." 

He hated fighting, but that's all they ever did. He missed her, but he couldn't wait to push her away. He showed her no patience, no understanding. Just demands. Be this for me. Don't be that. I don't like that. She had tried so hard to show him the parts of her that were soft, but being vulnerable didn't come naturally to her hardened heart. She had tried to tell him, but she wasn't enough. She already knew that. She didn't need to hear it from him. 

Naoki unlatched the door, pushing her way in. "Then don't fight with me." 

She could hear his silence as she threw herself after her friends. 

ILLIAS WENT AFTER HER. Of course he did. Despite everything, and for reasons he couldn't even begin to comprehend, he loved her. Always did. Always would. Even as his eyes burned and his heart stung, he went after her. Even as he pushed her away, he still made sure she was safe. It was the least he could do. 

Inside, it was a mess. 

Theo, with black gushing from his eyes and nose, was lunging at Dexter. Naoki had placed herself between him, playing a deadly version of that which-way-will-he-go game around the kitchen counter. Dexter quailed behind her, holding a knife in his hands like it was the last thing he wanted to touch. 

Paris and Xandra were still fighting the Damia itself, though it was beginning to stagger under the weight of controlling both Theo and Hanne, plus its thousands of gaping wounds. Illias froze, wondering who to help first, then ran for Naoki and Dexter. 

"Get out of here, Dex!" Naoki yelled, sliding over the countertop. She kicked Theo in the chest, knocking him down, and straddling him with her thick spiked boots. "Go to Illias!" 

Dexter nodded, dropping the knife and sprinting, reaching out for Illias. 

Theo moved with inhumane speed. A splintered piece of floorboard was in his hands, and then it was sprouting from Naoki's thigh, and she was screaming in pain. Monstrously, demonically fast, he was slinking along the floor like a snake, shredding the skin on his forearms. His hand clamped around Dexter's ankle, and he went sprawling to the floor. All in the matter of seconds. 

Illias lunged out, catching him just in time, and wrenched him away from Theo's grasp. Illias shoved Dexter outside and slammed the door behind him. 

"Stop this," he growled, turning to Theo, who lay on the ground, sneering at him. 

"What's the matter, Illias?" Theo's voice drawled, the echo of a monster's growl behind it. "Scared I'll steal your girl? I could do so much better than... you." 

Illias ignored him, hoisting Theo's cracked body up, pinning his arms behind his back. His strength was tenfold in Mirage, and he could easily lift Theo, who was a few inches shorter than himself. 

"Don't worry, I'm sure Naoki would be so much happier with me," Theo purred. "Not with a know-it-all, self-serving, ridiculously obnoxious man like yourself." 

Naoki, bleeding on the ground, pushed herself to her knees. "Just knock him out, Illias." 

"Yeah, Illias," he agreed, grinning, revealing black-stained teeth. "Knock me out like a big strong bully." 

"I'm not a bully," Illias gritted. 

Theo pouted. "Oh sure you're not. You're just a bully who's duped everyone into liking you, cuz of that pretty face of yours. Really? You're the top of the food chain, you benefit from watching everyone else run around to please you. You're not a good person. A good person wouldn't make his girlfriend cry. A good person would still have a girlfriend." 

"Illias!" Naoki said sharply. "Knock. Him. Out." 

"That's just what a bad person would do," Theo said solemnly, martyrish. "Knock me out then, dear devil, and be done with it." 

"Shut up!" Illias yelled, slamming Theo down onto the countertop. Marble cracked. 

Theo giggled. "Ooh, feisty. So you've got a temper down under all that muscle after all." 

"I said, shut up," Illias sneered, pounding him harder into the countertop. Theo wheezed, coughing up more black blood, still giggling breathily. 

"Illias! Stop!" Naoki yelled, limping over. "Cut it out, and just get it done." 

"Do it," Theo taunted. "You won't." 

"SHUT. UP." Illias roared. 

"ILLIAS DO IT," Naoki screamed, drawing her own sword. "DO IT OR I WILL." 

Illias's head was going blank, rage pulsing through him, hot and blinding. He couldn't see anything, could only smell his own fury and feel the thundering of his pulse in his head. Someone was shoving him to the side, landing him on the ground. He bellowed in pain, throwing himself back up, and lunging at the person who shoved him. 

Then there was the sharp smell of sulphur and citrus, and the world was spinning black. 

Last thing he remembered was his hands wrapped around Naoki's neck. 

author's note! 

for clarification, their first "final" mission was in the prologue. this was just another drill that came up that they decided to do for one last practice run. you can never have too many practice runs, right? 

i pushed back the grande finale so that i would have time to actually write it, and seeing the way things are looking, it's not gonna happen on that day anyway. so, oops. oh well, it's fine </3 

anyway, they'll be official keepers soon! yay for our babies! 

it kinda became the Illias-and-Naoki-need-therapy-show, so i'll try to wrap around to more of your guys' characters for sure. 

chapter seven will probably be up either tonight or tomorrow, depending on if i get any work done on it. it's like halfway there. ummm, that's all the updates i have for you for now? i think? i'm probably forgetting something :/ but it's fine 

happy 1k, also! thanks you guys <3

see you soon!